Taxi cab driver begged woman not to undergo abortion
by Carder
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t kill the baby.” He wouldn’t move the car, though horns blared all around us.
“Keep driving! I have an appointment!” I shook his headrest. This was not part of the script.
“Please don’t kill the baby,” he said again, turning around to face me. He had beautiful big brown eyes — almost black. “I will take care of you and the baby. I work two jobs.”
“Drive,” I told him.
“You are going by yourself?” he asked.
I said, “Drive.”
He drove. The camera wasn’t on. I didn’t have any of it on tape.
~ Writer Lisa Selin Davis (pictured with her daughters), describing her experience with a New York taxi cab driver who begged her not to “kill the baby” on her way to her scheduled abortion appointment, New York Times Opinionator, July 2
[Photo credit: Parenting]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“Remember to welcome strangers in your homes. There were some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing it.”
Hebrew 13:2
Apparently anyone can be a pro-life advocate! God bless him!
There are some very sad quotes in that essay.
“The begging cabdriver and the woman on her ninth abortion and the shocking suction in my womb: It was too traumatic for me[…] I had been taught that a woman’s right to choose was the most important thing to fight for, but I hadn’t known what a brutal choice it was.”
“I wish that someone had alerted me to the harshness of the experience, acknowledged the layers of regret that built and fell away as the months and years passed. I want my daughters to have the option of safe and legal abortion, of course. I just don’t want them to have to use it.”
There are also some interesting comments:
“I had an abortion when I was 19 years old, and never looked back until 20 years later when a girlfriend–younger than me–introduced me to her 20 year old son. “The love of my life!” she gushed as she introduced him. It was then, at that moment, that the reality of my abortion hit me; it was then that I got that it was a life that I had terminated. I agree with the commentator who stated that the conversation is not open enough. It has become a political discussion, and that does a great disservice to the young women who are effectively spoon fed that abortion = un-pregnant.”
“Before my abortion I carried a previous pregnancy to full term while I was still in high school. My mother and a social worker forced me to give up the child for adoption. They told me what a brave thing it was, to give the child a chance at a better life than what she would have with me, obviously a terrible person and a slut. My daughter died at six weeks after a failure to thrive in a foster home and then in her adoptive home.
I have a whole lot of regrets about that first pregnancy, but none at all about the abortion. The abortion was a better experience and a better decision.”
This one is pretty much spot-on until the final sentence:
“The big take-away from this article comes from the readers: there is no one abortion story. Just read the comments: 30 years of regret versus immediate relief and resumption of daily life. That is why policy should not be based on anecdote. That is why individual women should have the right to decide for themselves.”
That generous-hearted cab driver is my hero. He is a one-man Pregnancy Care Center.
We can imagine that he had given a lot of thought toward what he would say if one day a young lady fared into his cab and asked to go to an abortion mill.
God bless him!
Well, he ultimately did drive her to the clinic. So I can’t really consider him a hero for that.
A good read though. Very heartbreaking. It does a good job demonstrating that the “abortion on demand without apology” faction will never be able to sell the idea that there’s nothing wrong with abortion whatsoever and that it’s no different from having a mole removed.
“That is why individual women should have the right to decide for themselves.”
This individual woman admitted that she “had the self-esteem of a squashed toad.” Why would you support and encourage a hurting human to hurt and kill another human? Why would you not try to do what you could to help her?
I’m sure in hindsight the cab driver wishes he would have turned the car around and took her back home but he had the guts to speak out and offer her help debunking the myth that prolifers don’t care about moms and babies once they are born. She literally missed the opportunity of a Life! My heart breaks for her and I pray that she takes that small leap over to our side to speak out for life.
The little boy that I was pressured to abort because I was unmarried and pregnant turns 24 today! I have zero regrets about choosing life and he is a beautiful addition to our world!
Congratulations, and happy birthday to your son, Praxedes!
Thanks Alexandra. I hope all is well with you and your family.
I just reread through the whole story by Lisa and she was 22 when she chose abortion. The same age I was when I chose life. We need to do better helping each other — and accepting help from each other.
Funny that you mention my family, Praxedes – a certain little boy turns five today, the same day that your son turns 24! Now he can write his name, and draw round little head-and-limbs people, and put his face underwater at the pool, and everything.
Interestingly, I was 22 when I was faced with choosing between abortion and life. It was a decision taken out of my hands in the end, the prime-time-TV cop-out of a miscarriage intervening (always conveniently occuring after the requisite ratings were bumped by the narrative drama the pregnancy introduced). At the time I was pretty sure I would have an abortion, though, so I have always identified more with women who had abortions than women who miscarried. Like so many women who abort, I felt sadness but also overwhelming relief – and also like I had gotten away with something, like I’d saved a bunch of money if nothing else. That child would be the same age as the older brother of the newly-christened 5-year old. I think about that sometimes, the coincidence of it, how in the end even though I was all set to reject the life of my own child, and probably would have ended that life if I had the choice, I’ve ended up loving and caring for and helping raise a child her age (she was always a girl to me) all the same. And sometimes I think about what I lost, what I would have voluntarily thrown away if I’d been given the chance. Not just on the good days, where everyone has a fun time at the beach and no one fights and an ice cream dessert is followed by a peaceful bedtime – but even on the bad days, where we’re all sick and puking and miserable. I think about all that would be lost if any one of us wasn’t there at all.
The brutality and harshness and loss of “becoming un-pregnant,” as so many people imagine abortion (or miscarriage) to be, took me by surprise when I was 22, just like it did for this woman. I, too, had always been taught that abortion was one of the most important rights to defend, one of the ones “they” most wanted to take away. And my experience, like this writer’s, was not enough to change my mind. But it was enough to change my heart, just a little bit, at least.
Happy Birthday to your little one, Alexandra! Five is a great — and busy — age! I so truly respect the role you have taken on in their lives!
My parents also celebrate 50 years of marriage today! Because of the choices I made in that area, I will probably never see 50 years of marriage (unless I add my marriages up!) :)
Now you are young and could be a different story. . .
Please know I throw my hint out with sincere love for you. ;)
No worries, Praxedes! I’m not really that young, though, haha. In my circle of friends I am considered “very young” to have a child, but I’m the same age my mother was when she had her first, and back then she was considered “almost too old.” Funny how things change.
My parents made it to 40 years (and are only in their 60s now) before my dad went senile and blew the family up. I always thought they would hit 50. I used to wonder, “Who gets divorced after 40 years of marriage?” but apparently “grey divorces” are on the rise. Seems a bit like, “You got through the newlywed stage, the starving years, and babies and kids and teenagers, and college tuition, and empty-nest worries – and THEN decided it couldn’t work?” to me. I mean old-age divorces in general, not really my parents’, which I think is more about possibly age-related declining mental health than incompatibility. Maybe a lot of old-age divorces are, who knows.
Anyway, as for 5, he has shocked everyone by turning out to be a very artistic little boy (startling because for the first 4.5 years, he was all about the…brute strength. He was shoving his older brother as soon as he could walk – and, on the flip side, hugging or grabbing or just constantly holding onto kids when he adored them. Subtle or sensitive, much less symbolic, displays of emotion were not something that ever entered anyone’s mind when they thought of him). Back when he was in his terrible 3’s we used to joke (through tears) that he would grow up to be an Artistic Director – he needed to have every single thing JUST THE WAY HE ENVISIONED IT or a diva-level tantrum would ensue (literally trying to dictate, at times, details as minute as who ate which parts of dinner in what order) – and lo, it turns out that now that he can control his hands better, he does actually deeply enjoy the ability to create things as he envisions them. Who knew. So for his birthday I made him an art satchel in a fabric I picked out a year or so ago with him in mind. It has plexiglass backing on it so that it’s sturdy enough to be its own “desk” in places like the car (but only 1/4″ thick so it’s still lightweight), and it holds crayons, markers, pencils, and a drawing pad. It folds up into a big-book-sized tote with handles and will fit in his backpack for when he goes to big-kid school in the fall.
Here are some pictures, just because I am procrastinating some serious work and would rather share them right now than do what I’m supposed to be doing:
All closed up: http://imgur.com/erEISrc
Interior: http://imgur.com/G4KsP1L
All opened up: http://imgur.com/HRdrDrQ The crayons being segregated like that is very important because he doesn’t like when they “draw on each other.” Artistic Director, indeed.
Alexandra, would you say your experienced changed your heart in that you considered what the mother goes through more, or what the little boy or girl fetus goes through more, or what both parties involved go through more?
I’m sorry about you experienced a miscarriage. Though I would never equate intentional killing with natural death, I can attest to the unique loss of miscarriage. I also experienced that sad reality four times.
Sorry but as we talk about victims of abortion here is proof that she is not. I wouldnt want a 20 year old….well dont worry youve already killer him/her after a stranger begged you not to! Also you wanted to film it?!!! What is wrong with you. Sigh..
Just another All About Me story. Its very common Im sad to say.
But im crying because it hurts! It hurts you! Never mind the fact youve just murdered someone. I got home and we ordered take out. I was just so hungry after MY day. me me me me me. My career. My choice.
Your art satchel would be a hit at any art fair, Alexandra. You are very talented and junior is one lucky little artist! My youngest never had a problem with the crayons drawing on each other but he did not want the foods getting into each others bubble spaces!
Praxedes, thank you – you’re very kind! At my day job I build stuff out of wood and steel, so I always enjoy coming home and building out of fabric, instead, for fun. My grandmother had ten children and made the clothing (and Sunday hats!) for all of them; plus lots of toys for all of us grandkids. She was far better than I am but every time I get a little bit better, I like to think that she would be proud.
Mary Ann, I don’t think it changed it in any concretely identifiable way like that, necessarily. I became very strongly pro-choice after my experience, much more actively than I had been before when it was all merely “theoretical” rather than an experience that actually might have applied to me. But I do think that it opened my eyes a bit to the validity of choosing life, as an option that had to be equally protected, respected, and accommodated. Because even being strongly pro-choice and strongly leaning towards abortion, I felt the real pull of ambivalence and what-ifs, and the life-changing nature of the fork in the road I had approached; it was impossible for me to ignore how strong those feelings must be for women less “convicted” than I had been at the time I got pregnant. And so, some months later, when a person on an online forum gently pointed out to me that my college’s pro-choice volunteer organization (which I supported) only helped women get to the Planned Parenthood, not to any crisis pregnancy centers, I reacted pretty openly rather than defensively, and actually got that changed – I coordinated with a local pregnancy resource group and basically pressured the “pro-choice” group until they also agreed to also assist women in getting to that venue, if they so desired. I don’t think I ever would have given that comment a moment’s thought had I not seen the harsh ambivalence and pain of the whole experience through my own eyes at some point – had I not been forced to confront the reality of choosing abortion, and how un-“Lite” of a decision it can truly be.
After that – after realizing that I had to argue quite hard to get the pregnancy resource group taken seriously by a pro-choice organization – I began to see the slanted nature of the pro-choice position, where lots of lip service is given to the sacred nature of “choice” but only one choice is actually defended, supported, and catered to. I was still pro-choice for years after that but I was often embarrassed by the single-mindedness of the pro-choice movement, which at times seems to feel fine with the idea that the choice between “having a baby” or “staying in school” is a natural, default choice that simply can not be changed and thus warrants no effort whatsoever – when in reality I saw that that choice (or nearly any of the “have a baby” versus “x” choices) are social constructs that we have willingly built and lazily tolerated. I began to see abortion support as an almost inherently lazy stance to take, given the other (and often ignored) issues at hand. When pro-choicers talked about how abortion let women finish school, or keep their jobs, or whatever, all I could hear was how heavily endorsed this choice and situation is by society, how society depends on women to just fall in line and abort rather than expecting anything – much less anything better – from anyone.
After quite some time, I asked myself if there was truly a “reason” to abort that was not a result of social or economic coercion, since I was by then strongly opposed to accepting the justification of abortion for coercive reasons. The only one I could come up with was “Because it’s my body and I want to,” and from there it was a very clear singular argument in my mind, stripped of all the “had to finish school”/”didn’t have insurance”/”barely paying rent” coercions masquerading as justifications: does the right to life of an unborn person temporarily trump the right to bodily autonomy of a born person? There were some long debates – siamese twins, mandatory blood/organ donation, the usual hypotheticals – that got very uncomfortable for me. Nothing made me happier than when the pro-life person I was discussing it with resorted to personal attacks – calling me a slut or a used tissue or worse – because it was an immediate out, a distraction from a stance that I increasingly realized I could not defend to its full and complete end. I could follow their lead and veer off-topic, into the quality of my own character, which I was much more comfortable defending. Still I remained sure that there was a defense – I just had to articulate it. And yet I couldn’t. And finally one day I just thought to myself, maybe I can’t articulate this defense because there is none. Maybe I have assumed that a core true argument exists and spent years trying to find it, rather than starting with what I know to be true, assuming nothing, and seeing where the core truths take me.
It took a very, very long time – much longer – for me to be as emotionally comfortable with being pro-life as I was intellectually comfortable (which took a long time on its own). To this day, I most often “feel” more for the woman than the child. The difference is that now I know that my feelings are my own, and are not a rational basis for what actually is so or what should be. I also recognize that my compassion for women in tough situations does not have to be manipulated into an endorsement of anything they feel will help make things better. I am not a religious person – I don’t have any beliefs for or against souls, afterlives, etc – so I am often more touched by the fear, panic, and desperation of a scared and pregnant woman than by the injustice of the abortion of a child who is not yet able to know fear or feel pain. But now I recognize that no one’s fear or desperation takes precedence over another person’s life. I am at the very least, if nothing else, an intellectually honest person, and intellectually I could see that my feelings were out of line with what logic was telling me was so. And, intellectually and honestly, I knew which was more important.
So anyway, by “heart-changing” I can’t really say that my heart immediately recognized the coercive and abusive nature that abortion can take on for women, or that it felt for the children whose lives are lost. I just mean that it sensitized me to the issue as a whole, turned it into something other than mere debate, and made me more receptive to even just that one early criticism. Which made a big difference, in the end.
Sorry this all got so long.
I appreciate the detail, Alexandra, and I think I get it, thanks!
Its refreshingly honest for people to acknowledge what you termed the laziness of the pro-choice position. I came to that realization for myself, too, before I became pro-life.
The societal strictures do not allow for a free choice in all too many circumstances. That abortion supporters turn a blind eye to so many anti-woman things in order to lift up abortion as a right is a red flag.
And agreed- being pro-life is not always comfortable. The tough cases are… tough and sad. Especially when you know or are the people going through the difficulties.
Awesome post, Alexandra! I hope Lisa finds herself over here and may have a change of heart.
Lisa wrote this on her FB in response to a friend who also chose abortion, “thank god for those mistakes so we could get to the good guys and the right kiddos.”
The married man cheating on his wife may not have been a good guy. But Lisa seems to forget that she was the not so nice woman he was cheating with. The innocent child paid the price for their poor behaviors. Lisa hasn’t taken a good hard look in the mirror yet and taken responsibility for her role.
If Lisa’s current husband cheated on her, would that make her kiddos not the right kiddos too?
All kiddos are the right kiddos, including those who come about from affairs. Tears.
Prax….right! My friend aborted for the same reason. She was about 26 and was breaking up with the guy after discovering she was pregnant. She said to me “There is no way I could be with “JOE” for 18 years.” “Im definatly having an abortion. Hes begging me not to but Ive made the appointment.” She had the abortion and went back to her ex. She finished nursing school and has never expressed regret. She says her abortion was a good thing and she is now in her 40s. To address your point and
Cont…..and Alexandras point I believe she felt relief. I do not believe all women feel regret. I just do not believe that. Do all murderers inn prison feel remorse? Nope. So to be fair how can we expect all women to view their abortions as a negative experience?
Also many sites support what Ive just said….Im Not Sorry Exhale After abortion and I Love Abortion or I Love My Abortion Provider. People always want to say these women do feel bad or will feel bad. Im here to say I dont agree. Although we know its murder perhaps they dont know or dont care.